PITTSBURGH — In prehistoric North Dakota, a warm, wet land roamed by turtles and crocodiles,
there lived a dinosaur that experts think looked like a giant chicken.

When the species’ bones arrived at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History a decade ago,
employees looked at the 11-foot-long animal, with its beak, long neck, crested head and slanted
posture, and nicknamed it the “chicken from hell.”

“He probably did look like a giant, really freaky chicken,” said Matt Lamanna, a paleontologist
at the Carnegie Museum, who spent nine years studying the animal.

On Wednesday, Lamanna and three other paleontologists published a paper giving the infernal
chicken a place in the dinosaur family tree. Now, it has a more dignified name:
Anzu wyliei.

Anzu, which weighed about 500 pounds, lived 66 million years ago, shortly before dinosaurs went
extinct. The species was probably an omnivore, Lamanna said, dining on leaves, fruit, eggs and tiny
creatures like lizards.

When it wasn’t chowing down, Anzu probably was busy running away from its contemporary,
Tyrannosaurus rex.